Tag Archives: death metal

This weekend on Beautiful Decay we want to welcome you over to the dark side, where a vast amount of artists are churning out contemporary art fueled by the fire of Metal. A multitude of artists these days are making art inspired by the crushing sounds and dark spirit of Heavy Metal, Death Metal and Doom music, all of which weave in and out of several other genres.

I’ve been a huge fan for a while now of the work made by artists Skinner, Ben Venom and Martin Durazo, which are strongly informed by Heavy Metal. This past week after chatting with artist and Beautiful Decay owner, Amir H. Fallah and artist Skinner and reaching out on Facebook to learn more about artists tied into this music scene, I was turned onto a breadth of incredible artists. A lot of artists working with metal as inspiration have strong crossover into design and illustration, album art, posters (especially for the band Mastadon), band merch and murals. There’s also a strong genre of work that explores dark spiritual matter, mythology and death that is absolutely captivating. You can expect upcoming coverage of these sub-genres in coming weeks.

Currently Trending

Maggots, Baphomet, long-taloned claws breaking through evil faces, crazy scythe wielding demons, candelabras welded from the remains of human skulls, rot, decay and Mayhem (the general sense of disorder, and the band) all seem to pump their fists and raise their axes in artist Mark Riddick’s world. I would not be surprised if this dude drank the blood of a goat and burned a church or two. Okay, maybe not….but his drawings make me want to shred and paint my face…on his website he says he’s been illustrating for the black/death metal world since ’91. Stay death metal forever.

Currently Trending

I don’t know much about Jason Lahr’s work and I couldn’t find an artist statement online but anyone who makes artwork about death metal, Old Dirty Bastard and mixes in digital painting trickery is A-OK by me!